Given the unsurpassed sound sensitivity of mosquitoes among arthropods and the sound source power required for long-range hearing, we investigated the distance over which female mosquitoes detect species-specific cues in the sound of station-keeping mating swarms. A common misunderstanding, that mosquitoes cannot hear at long range because their hearing organs are ‘particle-velocity’ receptors, has clouded the fact that particle velocity is an intrinsic component of sound whatever the distance to the sound source. We exposed free-flying Anopheles coluzzii females to pre-recorded sounds of male An. coluzzii and An. gambiae s.s. swarms over a range of natural sound levels. Sound levels tested were related to equivalent distances between the female and the swarm for a given number of males, enabling us to infer distances over which females might hear large male swarms. We show that females do not respond to swarm sound up to 48 dB sound pressure level (SPL) and that louder SPLs are not ecologically relevant for a swarm. Considering that swarms are the only mosquito sound source that would be loud enough to be heard at long range, we conclude that inter-mosquito acoustic communication is restricted to close-range pair interactions. We also showed that the sensitivity to sound in free-flying males is much enhanced compared to that of tethered ones.

考虑到节肢动物中蚊子无与伦比的声音灵敏度以及远距离听觉所需的声源功率，我们研究了雌性蚊子在站配交配蜂群的声音中检测特定物种线索的距离。常见的误解是，由于蚊子的听觉器官是“粒子速度”受体，因此它们无法在远距离听到声音，这一事实掩盖了一个事实，即与声源的距离无关，粒子速度是声音的固有成分。我们将自由飞行的库氏按蚊雌性暴露于男性An的预先录制的声音中。coluzzii和An。冈比亚SS在一系列自然声级上蜂拥而至。对于给定数量的雄性，所测试的声级与雌性和群之间的等效距离有关，这使我们能够推断雌性可能听到大群雄性的距离。我们表明，雌性动物对高达48 dB声压级（SPL）的蜂群声音无反应，并且更大声的声压级与蜂群在生态上无关。考虑到蜂群是唯一能在远距离听到的足够大的蚊香声源，我们得出结论，蚊间声通信仅限于近距离对相互作用。我们还表明，与拴系的男性相比，自由飞行的男性对声音的敏感性大大提高。